Thomas was born with a severe to profound hearing loss in his right ear. Thank God for newborn hearing screenings. At 6 months, he was diagnosed with EVA/LVAS and began to lose his hearing in his left ear. The hearing in his left ear has fluctuated since diagnosis, but he has a wonderful team of specialists helping him to listen and speak. This is his story -- as told by his mom, one of his biggest fans.

CI Activation

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Our church had the children 2-5 sing during the adult service. You just gotta love a video of your child (hearing impaired or otherwise) singing about our Lord and Savior! Makes my heart swell ten times bigger than before service.

Our little man is the guy with the tie t-shirt on and black jeans...you know the cute one toward the right of the screen (yep, I'm biased).

Thursday, October 27, 2011

A little over a month ago, Ms. Becky, our amazing cert-AVT, explained that Thomas was ready to reduce his AVT sessions to every other week. This proclamation scared me because we have been in weekly AVT since Thomas was 7-months old and he is still behind his hearing peers but, making fast progress. She said that he was ready, picking up language in more "natural" environments, not necessarily in therapy, and he was doing great work in school. So, I trusted Becky and I have to say that she was right. He continues to make great progress...even though I miss seeing Becky every week (selfish, I know).

Yesterday, I took our little man to Our Children's House in Grapevine Texas for a behavioral feeding evaluation. The feeding therapist worked with Thomas on his challenges with non-crunchy textures and saw all the things that I reported in writing...so assuming that we get insurance approval (fingers crossed), we will start feeding therapy twice a week, every.single.week until he is over this issue. So, losing one therapy session every other week will be replaced by two sessions every week...sigh!

I left the facility crestfallen. I was on the verge of tears the entire trip to Thomas' auditory oral preschool. These are just some of the questions that went through my mind: Why did he have to go through this? Hasn't God challenged him enough? With these new therapies, we will have to pull Thomas out of his mainstream preschool and add additional afternoon sessions with his A/O class. Will he still continue to develop his language at his current pace? If he is ready for mainstream preschool again next year, will I be able to find a spot for him at his new school or another one of the same caliber? Will he be ready for kindergarden in a year and a half? Will this feeding therapy really work? How long will it take to complete? Selfishly, how am I going to do this? I can't go back to Thomas vomiting again at every meal...how is this all going to work?

I dropped Thomas off at school and watched him walk with his best friend and his teachers into school and I lost it. I simply saw yet another hurdle for Thomas... and said aloud, "How are we going to do this?" The tears flowed and flowed and flowed as I tried to safely drive home.

I have to admit that I've been in a funk ever since...maybe needing to cry some more...maybe needing God to slap me in the face with His direction, not mine...maybe it is time for a little vacation from the kids before we start this new therapy...maybe I need to stop being selfish, suck it up and just do it...because the fact is...we are adding more therapy sessions.

Monday, October 24, 2011

We all have those little moments as a mom that makes our hearts happy. I'm dedicating Mondays to share some of these moments that I have with our little man.

This morning we went to our local Kroger to do some shopping and play "I spy" as we shop. This morning was different because we actually had fog, dense pea-soup fog. As we drove in the car and walked inside the store, we talked about fog, how it was difficult to see, how we needed to be extra careful in the parking lot, etc. As we were leaving the store after a competitive game of "I spy," Thomas ran up to a boy that was younger than him and said, "Be careful, boy. It is foggy outside and hard to see. Look both ways for cars."

Then we came home to play alphabet bingo (a great game that Thomas' great-grandmother gave him for his birthday). We were working on following rules, identifying letter sounds and correctly using has/have. The little turkey actually beat me 3 out of 4 games...followed the rules, had about 50% correct use of his letter sounds and used has/have correctly 100% of the time.

Overall, a good little Monday morning with a couple of happy mom moments.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Thomas wanted desperately to play Kinect with his daddy. I knew that he was tired and that his vomiting was a sign that he was overly tired -- a lesson taught to me by the wonderful Ms. Tammy. Two of her kiddos also vomited when they were overly tired.

After the clean up was done, Thomas and I sat on the floor on the kitchen to talk. The master negotiator in Thomas took over his body, mind and language. Here is a snapshot of what happened:

Mommy: Thomas you have to eat dinner.

Thomas: No, mommy! I want to play Kinect.

Mommy: Well, you have to eat dinner if you want to play Kinect with daddy.

Thomas: First, take a bath then play Kinect with daddy.

Mommy: Nope, you need to eat dinner. How about 3 pieces of chicken and potato?

Thomas: No, two pieces of chicken and chippies (what he calls chips).

Mommy: No deal. Twenty-four bites of chicken and 10 bites of potato. Deal or no deal.

Thomas: No deal, mommy. I want chippies and french fries. Then play kinect with daddy.

Mommy: No way. This is my final deal. You get in the bath, then play 10 minutes of Kinect then you eat all your dinner including applesauce. Deal or no deal.

Thomas: No deal.

Daddy: Thomas, this is your mom's best offer. I recommend that you take the deal.

Result -- quick bath, playing Kinect and about to see if we can keep second dinner down in his stomach...ugh! Sometimes this kid wears me completely out but, he also is learning great language skills, becoming the master negotiator -- and notice the number of verbal exchanges -- a goal for expanded conversational language.

Vomit and all...good language opportunity...time for a glass of wine for mommy...and second dinner for our little man.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

On Friday afternoon, I "talked" with the director of the other mainstream preschool that Thomas and I toured to tell them that we wanted to be on the waiting list for the older 3's class rather than have Thomas in a classroom with peers a few months younger than he. It was a hard decision to make because Thomas really liked this new preschool, especially a little girl named Molly. However, we don't want Thomas to regress, even though his language would still expand being around children a little younger than he. Nonetheless, a class with his actual hearing peers would be better.

So, this brings me to "the" talk that I'll have with his current preschool teachers and administrator this coming Tuesday. This past Thursday, I was encouraged by another mom (an awesome Mom & strong advocate for her typical-hearing child) to go and sit down with the director of his current mainstream preschool to tell her how important his FM system is and that I was displeased that his teacher didn't follow up my emails to schedule a time to learn how to use it. With this mom as my inspiration, I walked in and requested some time with the director. She immediately said, "Why don't we talk right now?" So, we went to her office and I grabbed the tissue box just outside her office door...because I knew that I was going to cry...I always tend to do this when it comes to our little man. We had a great discussion. She apologized for not getting the technology in the classroom already and we scheduled the meeting with his teacher for 9:30am this coming Tuesday.

While I still don't know if this is the preschool that the Lord wants Thomas to attend, I also don't know that it isn't. So, I pray for strength, ability to also listen, encourage questions and a sense of peace. I haven't felt much peace lately...but more than anything...I pray that the teachers (all of them including music, Spanish, chapel and PE teachers) will use the FM system appropriately. And if not, I ask that the Lord give us a spot quickly at the other mainstream preschool.

Deep breath for the talk this coming Tuesday...deep breath that Thomas continues to thrive...deep breath...

Monday, October 3, 2011

How did this happen? It seems like yesterday that our little man came into our lives. Now, he is 4 years old and will proudly tell you this fact.

Rather than do a kiddie-party this year, we decided to spend his birthday weekend doing some fun things that Thomas loves (and his big sister had a blast, too). First, we took the Trinity Rail Express from Fort Worth to Dallas. Thomas loves trains and this was his first official ride. We hopped off the train and went to the Dallas Aquarium. Finally, we stopped off for a relaxed lunch before boarding the train for the trip home. The train was definitely the highlight of the day. Here are a few of the pictures I took during our adventure.

On Sunday, we skipped church (shh, don't tell anyone) and we went bowling. We also opened presents and ate cake.

Happy birthday, our sweet boy! Hope that you had a very special weekend!

About Me

I am a stay-at-home mom to two wonderful little kiddos. Sidney is 9, going on 17, and a hearing child. Thomas is a rough and tumble 3-year old that is deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other ear. This blog is for my friends and family to keep up on Thomas' progress, but ultimately it is for Thomas. I want to chronicle how hard he works and all the strides that he makes in his battle to listen and speak.